


Accepting the Mantle

by Skalidra



Category: Batman (Comics), DCU (Comics)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Magic, Alternate Universe - Modern with Magic, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Rituals
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-22
Updated: 2016-10-22
Packaged: 2018-08-29 15:22:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,605
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8495062
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Skalidra/pseuds/Skalidra
Summary: Gotham's always needed a protector; someone to be bound to the magic at its core and be, intrinsically, the heart of the city. With Bruce dead, that falls on Dick's shoulders like everything else did. Assuming that the city will accept him, and actually grant him that power.





	

**Author's Note:**

> Welcome! This one was written for Round 3 of the Batfam Rolling Remix; total Gen. Enjoy!

Dick breathes out, slow and steady, as he stares upwards at the glyphs carved into the archway before him. Down in the depths of the caves, miles beneath Gotham's ground and at the true heart of the city. Accessible only by the winding, pitch-black paths that come from the manor; what Gotham's protector calls home.

Called home.

Bruce is… dead. Gone. The city is without a protector, unstable, and it's starting to show. There are cracks in the stability of the network, outbursts of magic that ordinarily would be contained and then safely vented — like the harmless fog that sometimes seeps from beneath the streets, with its blue-tinted glow — but now do damage in increasingly unpredictable ways. Cities as big as Gotham, as _old_ as Gotham, need someone at the heart of them to keep all the careful systems in balance. Bruce, for _years_ , was that heart.

Now it has to be someone else. It has to be him.

Jason is too unstable, magically _and_ emotionally, to weather that kind of strain; Tim doesn't believe that Bruce is actually dead, and he's too young anyway, too recently affected by so _much_ loss; and Damian… Damian may have Bruce's blood, but Dick would _never_ put the burden of holding Gotham steady onto a child. Not even if that child is as advanced and _powerful_ as Damian is, with the skill and training of a full adult.

So there's no other option, and here he is.

He takes another breath in and raises his hand, letting that hot, twisting place buried behind his rib cage slip through the gaps and into his skin. He presses his hand against the archway, and the glyphs light up in response, glowing blue like a heated flame. He empties his mind except for the awareness of the heat at his core, and steps forward through the archway. It feels like rain against his skin for a moment, the heat of the sun, the dampness of fog, and he hears the screech of sirens, the chatter of a crowded subway platform, the _rush_ of cars…

And his foot hits ground on the other side and it's just him again, just the magic beneath his skin and the darkness of the room beyond the archway.

He breathes out, and lets his hand slip from the stone as he walks forward, casting aside his wariness of the dark, and the silence. He looks down as blue light spirals through the floor beneath his feet, illuminating patterns so old and complex he can only barely start to understand their purpose before the room is lit. The patterns light up the walls, the ceiling, and the dark, yawning pit at the center of the room. He feels pulled to it, and he follows the urging that guides him to walk to the edge of that pit and kneel down.

Except, closer now, it's not a pit but a pool. So black it looks like empty space, but when he reaches down and touches it his hand slides into warm liquid, ripples lapping out from his touch. Too thick to feel like water, too _alive_ in how when he pulls his hand back it lingers, dripping reluctantly from black-stained fingers and into the pool. He can feel it clinging to him, feel how it calls to his magic. So he lets more of the heat in him slip between his ribs, sends it down and out his arm until blue power burns at his fingertips, and the urging is back in his mind to reach down, down…

 _Power_ , slicing up his arm and into his spine and bending him into a sharp arch, the pool suddenly feeling as hard as marble around his fingers. His mind _lights_ up with sound and sight and knowledge and he can barely feel how he gasps, can barely feel how his own magic _surges_ at the touch of something older and more powerful than he's ever felt. Centuries upon centuries of binding, and rituals, and sacrifices physical and emotional, all to create this focal point, and then _so_ much later to attach it to the city as a source of protection.

 _Gotham_ , at its heart. At its soul.

 _"Speak your name,"_ whispers a voice, coming from somewhere so much deeper than just his mind, resonating with his very bones.

"Richard John Grayson," he answers, blinking up at the glyphs on the ceiling, and then adds, "Dick. Nightwing."

 _Approval_ he can feel like the stroke of fingers in his hair, like the squeeze of a hand on his shoulder, like a warm smile…

_"Speak your intentions, Gray Son of Gotham; my grown bird."_

"I—” The glyphs are pulsing in time with his heartbeat. "To be Gotham's protector. It's heart. To have the power of the Bat, like you gave to Bruce."

_"Why?"_

The sadness takes what little breath he has, and the room shivers around him, the glyphs dimming before he forces himself to speak. "Because Bruce is gone, and Gotham needs a heart."

Comfort, like the fall of a blanket over his shoulders, like arms wrapped tight around him, like the tears of friends in shared grief.

_"You desire to change your path from bird to bat?"_

He almost says yes, but then he shudders and admits, "No. It's not what I want, but I volunteer." He drags in a deeper breath, pushes away all the bits of his mind that never wanted to follow in Bruce's footsteps. "I ask that I be tied to Gotham's blood, to serve it and care for it until my dying breath. I am Bruce's heir in all ways but blood, and I would accept this part of his inheritance as well."

A pause. Coils ready to burst, lines drawn tight, the drawn-in breath of a crowd, and—

_"As you wish, Gray Son. Step into the pool, and open yourself to take what you have asked for."_

The power releases him, draining away and out of his fingertips, and he collapses out of the arch and to the hard dirt. He has to take several shallow, gasping breaths before he can manage to push up and get to his feet. He steps into the pool cautiously, bending until his foot touches something tenuously solid, and he can bring his other leg in as well. The black liquid reaches his waist, and he lowers his hands to trail in it, tilts his head back and breathes out.

Years of practice let him empty his mind with only a second of effort, and then he manually pushes himself open, dropping mental and magical shields alike as he bares himself more openly than he has in anything but utterly private training.

He can feel the blackness creeping up his arms, and he exhales again, lowers his head and waits.

Something deep within his soul _cracks_ , and he feels his heart stutter at the feeling, sees the glyphs mimic that. He has to swallow not to fight as something splits apart in him, pulls open, and he can _feel_ the worlds beyond in the core of his soul, feel some inkling of the power he's being exposed to as it seeps through. Into him. Old and ancient and something otherworldly, something so _different_ that he doesn't think it's actually a being, per say. The darkness seeping into him through that door is _alive_ though, in the same way that the liquid is alive.

It… It doesn't hurt, exactly, but as the darkness creeps into him he begins to feel the raw _strength_ in it, begins to feel like his skin is straining at the seams to contain it all. And then the door tweaks a little wider, and that _does_ hurt. The seep becomes a rush, and he would cry out but he has no voice, not with the darkness covering him inside and out, not with the _power_ soaking into every cell of him. It twists around his own power, and he thinks for a second that blue heat within him might vanish. Might get swallowed up in the _otherness_ of it all and he might just be eaten alive by this.

So he stays open, but he lets himself _burn_. Lets magic light up his nerves and twist through his limbs and through that darkness, lets them slide together. He will be Gotham's protector, but he will _not_ stop being himself to accept that. He's had heat and power beneath his skin since he was a child, and he doesn't want to give that up and have it replaced with this warm darkness, no matter how powerful it makes him. He is not, and will never be, Bruce.

The door closes, and the liquid slides away from his skin, lets him see the blue glyphs and the cave once more. The darkness within him lingers, filling him to the bursting point and making him feel a drop away from overloading entirely and casting it everywhere around him.

_"You are accepted, Gray Son of Gotham. You will serve as Gotham's heart. You will bleed, laugh, and scream with her and her people. Her veins are your own. The gift you have been given will settle within them."_

Slowly, he climbs from the pool, and all trace of black has vanished from his skin except for the staining at his fingers. It seems to take a lifetime to straighten up, but he manages it.

"Thank you," he breathes, and then turns to follow the lines of one path of glyphs back to the archway.

_"Go from this place and rest, Gray Son. The city needs it, as do you."_


End file.
